JAPAN
age of such an enthusiast, is not wonderful. A few years after this event, Kuroda, hearing that a tilemaker of remarkable skill lived in the adjoining province of Bungo, invited him to Chikuzen. This man's name was Buroku. His grandson, Sōhichi, developed great plastic ability, and gave his name to a ware little known in modern times, but well deserving of notice. It was buff stone-ware, the pâte as fine as pipe-clay and exceedingly hard, and the glaze very thin and diaphanous with a greenish tinge. Many specimens are not glazed at all, their surface being merely polished, after the style of the old Fukakusa-yaki. In this Sōhichi-yaki excellent examples of plastic work are to be found, as masks, censers, alcove ornaments, and so forth. At a later period of the manufacture—probably from the beginning of the eighteenth century—pigments were used for decorative purposes, especially in the manufacture of figures with drapery elaborately painted in various colours. The pâte of the ware is not uniform, and sometimes it is comparatively soft and chalky. From the time of Sōhichi until that of his seventh descendant (about 1830), the family had the honour of sending a special parcel of ware every year to the Imperial Court in Kyōtō. Tradition says that while this ware was in process of manufacture, a mauve curtain, embroidered with the Imperial coat of arms, was drawn round the factory, which was in the town of Fukuoka, and no one below the rank of Councillor of State was permitted to pass on horseback. It was also permanently forbidden that any one residing within two cho (240 yards) of the factory should use the ideograph so (initial character of Sōhichi) to form his name.
There is now a porcelain factory at Tsukushi, in
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